The lesson was learned for both Cummings and Cartwright; to win the 17th District, a candidate needs Northampton County behind them.

“Before 2012, I was in Easton one time, and I didn’t even see a very nice part of town,” Cartwright said. “I was in a law office working. In 2012, I’ve been to Easton dozens of times. I’ve visited the Slate Belt and I have been through the Martin Guitar factory. I’ve come to really enjoy Northampton County.”

Cartwright even took a canoe trip down the Delaware River, he said.

Cummings has had a similar schedule.

“The only place I was not at yet is Forks (Township), and we have an event this weekend,” Cummings said.

In Bethlehem, Cummings learned about recent Federal Emergency Management Agency flood plain rezoning. The zoning supersedes local municipalities’ opinions on flood plain management. As the founder of the Scranton Tea Party, Cummings had particular concerns with the FEMA zoning.

“This is where government intrusion becomes a major issue, and this is why people like myself are stepping up and running for office,” Cummings said. “We’ve had enough. FEMA is for emergency management only. They should not be coming into your district or your town and regulating or rezoning anything.”

Cummings, a nurse and owner of a home health care business, said the Tea Party ideal is conservatism, not focused on any one party.

Cartwright, an attorney, considers his priority to be infrastructure development and job creation. But all that comes through education, he said.

“I consider education to be the crown jewel of American infrastructure,” Cartwright said. “It’s the cornerstone of what the middle class needs to survive.”

Education is “the ticket for the very poor into the middle class, and the ticket of the middle class to the American Dream.”

During his time in the area, he spoke to a woman whose husband was laid off from the Allentown School District, where he was a physical education teacher.

“I’m not running for governor, but it’s hard not to notice Gov. Corbett has cut education funding two years in a row,” Cartwright said.

Cartwright and Cummings agree on the importance of education, though disagree on implementation.

But where they really disagree is on the tax system.

Cummings has a simple solution for the complexity of the income tax code: kill it.

“It will celebrate its 100th birthday in February of 2013,” Cummings said. “I hope we get it (eliminated) in time so we don’t have that privilege. It’s a failed policy.”

Its problem, according to Cummings, is the tax seems like “punishment for your labor.”

“People who work under the table, people who are illegal workers, drug dealers and prostitutes, they’re not paying any taxes,” Cummings said. “There’s a whole litany of people who get away with not paying taxes, and people who work, the more you make, the more they take.”

But Cartwright said there was “nothing fair” about the tax, and criticized its starting rate, which has been proposed at 23 percent in the first year. The tax would then be adjusted based on federal receipts.

Because poorer people have the least wiggle room for the cost of goods, such a consumption tax would hurt the poor more than the wealthy, Cartwright said.

He admits the tax system as it stands has issues. He wants to go back to Clinton-era tax rates at the federal government, saying the wealthiest can “easily absorb” any spike in taxes, and the savings should be brought to the middle class.

But the problem isn’t the tax code so much as what we do with it, Cartwright said.

“We’re not being responsible in the revenue we’re raising,” Cartwright said.